The Power of Intention

When you make up your mind to do something, like it or not:

All barriers make way for you.
All change becomes a matter of time and effort.
All difficulties become possibilities.
All excuses vanish into thin air.
All fears begin to fear you.
All temptation melts away.
All things become accessible.

In that precise moment in time when you decide to do something, everything suddenly becomes crystal clear. You see your true capabilities, sometimes for the first time, because you allow them to rise to the surface. This is why challenges are so enlightening. They give you a better sense of yourself. They open your eyes to the most important – and the only – person who can turn your life around and bring miracles to life: YOU!

A marathon, a juice fast (mine was only 5 days but I did it!), a trip around the world, a drastic career move, it is all a matter of intention. As much as you may like to label others as “special” or “gifted” or whatever else to convince yourself that you could never do that, something still nags at you and you know it! You quietly wonder what if. You feel tempted to challenge yourself, to push yourself well outside that lousy comfort zone, and to seriously put your capabilities to test because maybe, just maybe, there is a chance, a possibility, a dim light in those shadows you create in your mind that you too can do anything you set your mind to.

Story Time

When I married my better half about 10 years ago, he was overweight by all charts and standards. Still handsome. Still dashing. Still a pure heart of gold. But he was fat. And I was worried. Well, not just worried. I was paranoid, desperate, and willing to do anything and everything to clearly communicate the urgency of his situation to him.

I’d like to mention that for the record, I was completely alone in this enormous task because our dear families thought that he looked “just fine” and my friends at the time thought that I was “too demanding”. Good thing I do not listen when I know I am right and no power in this world could convince me that being overweight is “fine”. Other may get complacent about their health. Fine! I had spent too much of my life preaching to them and one day I decided that it is no longer any of my business. My husband, on the other hand? Oh he is completely my business, whether he liked it or not.

And he did not like it at first.
Ummm, yeah. Those were not fun days.

No matter, even in this state of intense desire to change my man, I failed. Even with my powers of persuasion, I failed miserably. Even my most pressing pleas – and believe me, they were intense and I was not kidding around – did not go very far until the day he made up his mind to do it. It is about 8 years since that “movement” in our relationship but I still remember the exact moment he committed. I knew then that my work was mostly over and his had just started.

I learned at that moment that you cannot transfer your power of intention to someone else. It has to come from within for all of us. You can inspire someone all day long and sure, it goes a long way to helping them decide but decide, they must on their own and if they are not ready to do something, they won’t. You may think you got your way but even if they initially please you, their mind always gets its way in the end and sooner or later, you too learn that you cannot make that horse drink no matter how close you bring it to the water.

Oh and this story does have a happy ending. The moment my clever husband decided that I was right all along and that he did need to get in shape was the start of his most transformative journey in life. Today, 90 pounds later, all of which he has kept off over the years, he is happier, healthier and cannot bear to think about his old self.

The power of intention at work. Nothing special about him in this regard. Just the power of intention.

When is the last time you really and truly made up your mind to do something?

Simply Refuse

Enough already with the excuses, with feeling sorry for yourself or procrastinating that most important task of all by busying yourself with the little details that will not matter a week from today. Do what matters and if you have not yet made up your mind, identify exactly what is keeping you from doing it.

Resistance, they say, can be a bad thing. I want to turn it around and make it a good thing in this light. Create your own resistance to failure and you will have no choice but to succeed:

If you refuse to give up, you will simply not give up.
If you refuse to fail, you will just have to make it.
If you refuse to take no for an answer, you will find a way to find yes.
If you refuse to stop until you get there, well, guess what? You eventually get there, baby!

When the mind has been made up, few things can get in its way. When you are still hovering about trying to decide this or that, this way or that way, left or right, are you surprised that you do not make tremendous progress? When the energy is dispersed and the force is not fully set in motion, how can you? Your mind has to be ready for the challenge and your body will follow.

This is the power of intention. Everything happens because of your intention. This is the potential of the mind. Use the power of your mind. It is free. It is capable beyond measure because no advancement in science has literally – and I mean literally in its literal sense here – has measured it yet.

Your power of intention is your strongest asset and your biggest ally in life. Have you put yours to use lately?